


Nasty Habits

by marznipan



Series: Fallout New Vegas: Trouble in the Mojave [1]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Cigarettes, Humiliation, M/M, Power Dynamics, Punishment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:42:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23582560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marznipan/pseuds/marznipan
Summary: Benny has a nasty smoking habit, Swank wants to help him kick it.
Relationships: Benny (Fallout)/Swank (Fallout)
Series: Fallout New Vegas: Trouble in the Mojave [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1697572
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Nasty Habits

**Author's Note:**

> something short about ben man and swank, i wrote the draft to this on minecraft with the book and quill to put in the church as the bible... yes it was worth it.

Benny had always been messy, and Swank had always been the polar opposite – especially when it came to the art of putting out a cigarette. Nothing that he could say would stop Benny from flicking his ash wherever he pleased: the carpet, the drinks of other chairmen, the poker table and worst of all… on Swank. It wasn’t as though he did it on purpose, it was mostly because Benny was never thinking about anything other than himself, and didn’t tend to check his surrounding before making grand hand gestures while telling grossly exaggerated and dramatic stories. His cigarette ash would always land on the leg or the arm of one of Swank’s expensive, starched and ironed suits, but Benny didn’t ever seem to notice – or he just didn’t care. 

Swank would always find himself brushing it off, physically and emotionally, because he knew better than to try and undermine Benny or tell him what to do (especially somewhere public or in front of the other chairmen who were supposed to be Swank’s equals) but it would strike him to his neat-freak core whenever he witnessed Benny acting sloppily.

  
“-so, then I said, what’s the big idea messing with my casino? You should ‘a known by now that The Tops is numero uno around here!” Benny was telling one of his outlandish stories where he would mysteriously always come out on top, punctuating his final words with a flick of his wrist in Swank’s general direction.  
A hot lump of ash dropped onto the thigh of Swank’s pant leg, slowly cooling against the fabric and creating an eyesore of a stain against the rich navy blue. 

  
His eye twitched as he struggled to keep his composure.

  
“Boss,” He started, wondering is it was really worth his time to bring up something so small like this with the boss. Yes, Swank was his right-hand man, but that didn’t mean that he was exempt from receiving a swift backhand to the mouth if he said something out of turn. “You got’sta stop waving that around, the ash is making a hell of a mess.” Once his mouth clamped shit the eyes of the other chairmen around the poker table stared at him with what almost seemed to be murderous intent, waiting to see if Swank had finally pushed his luck a step too far with the big boss. 

  
Benny’s hand stilled in the air, waiting and dragging out the deep-rooted feeling of fear that was running through Swank at an unstoppable rate, pulsating within his veins and making his heart palpitate harder with each passing second. Glinting in the lights of the casino were the heavy rings that decorated Benny’s fingers, reminding Swank of the stinging pain and humiliating mark that they would leave if their wrath was to meet the bones of his jaw, branding him with the rounded edges of the heavy metal. Such rings reminded Swank of his place, and he knew that this was the only real reason that Benny would wear such a thing – for power and to inflate his already massive ego. They were friends, but Swank could agree that Benny was an acquired taste. 

  
Reaching forward into the centre of the table, Benny slide the glass ashtray that everyone else had been closer towards him with narrowed eyes, as though it was beneath him to do so, and finished his smoke quickly by putting it out in one of the chipped corners within the glass.   
Swank didn’t dare to say anything more or even look Benny in the eye for the rest of the evening. He was so shocked that he had just been allowed to get away with something like that, with scolding Benny as if he was his delinquent child in front of the other chairmen without suffering any sort of consequence. He was free to say whatever he wanted to Benny when they were wrapped in the comfort and safety of their bedrooms together, but things usually stayed quite tender in those moments – they were never scolding or fearful like they were now. 

  
As the night dragged on, Swank spent most of his evening starting into the bottom of his clouded whiskey glass whilst Benny entertained the others with his tales filled with mystery and gloating until the other men around the table started to slowly fizzle out, retreating to their beds or to a nearby whorehouse to get their quick kicks.   
Swank was about to shuffle out of his seat beside Benny and head off to bed himself, finally being able to relieve himself of the tension and slight fear that he had been harbouring for the majority of the night, until his boss’ slurred voice stopped him in his tracks.

  
“Don’t tell me what to do in front of the others again, Swank.” Benny’s voice was thick with drink and spite, and it seemed as though he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be having such bold words with Swank at a time like this, if he could have watched himself in this moment he knew that he would have very much regretted this in the morning. But nevertheless, he continued to dig his own ashy grave. “I mean, damn! I can’t have them all thinking that they can push me around the same way that you seem to think that you can. If I want to have a goddamn smoke then I will, and I’ll have it wherever I goddamn want to!” Lighting another cigarette to prove his point, sliding the partially filled ashtray across the table with as much might as his drunken body could muster, sending it crashing onto the floor in a childish fit of rage. 

  
Swank had decided that he had just about had enough of whatever character Benny had been trying to play in front of his suited and booted yes-men. He knew what Benny was really like, and that he was only acting like this because he was a) drunk and b) because he wanted to seem big and tough in front of the others.   
“It’s just me and you now, Benny. You can stop acting like a shithead.” Swank continued to get out of his chair and stood high above Benny, looking down at him and reaching out to pluck the newly lit cigarette from in-between his boss’ sneering lips. “I think it’s about time that you stopped talking to me like I’m just another one of your chairmen.”   
Before Benny’s brain had the time to catch up to what was happening so that he could try and murmur out a snarky response, his jaw was gripped by one of Swank’s rough hands, and was pried open with much more force than was completely necessary. 

  
Watching his face twist into one of disgust made Swank almost forget about all of the holes that were in some of his older suits from Benny’s careless habits, but he wasn’t satisfied just yet – and this is when he knew that he should take things a huge step further. He rubbed out the light on the cigarette by putting it out on Benny’s tongue. Pushing the stick down into a crushed wad before forcing Benny’s mouth shut once again. 

  
In all honesty, Benny didn’t know how to feel at all. He had never been put into his place like this before, especially not by someone who worked for him, not by someone who was supposed to holler ‘how high?’ when Benny demanded that he jump. The taste of the ash was rancid and the heat of it burned his taste buds, he knew that he wouldn’t like to sit through a repeat of this ‘lesson’, but there was something about the punishment and the difference in power that he enjoyed – especially when it was all coming from Swank. 

  
Maybe Benny did need to be put into his place eventually, and he might have subconsciously known this, secretly wanting to push Swank as far as he could before the man would snap. The explosive reaction that he got from the man was thrilling, he never knew that misbehaving would get him something that he truly wanted – and now that Benny knew the new power that he held he was going to play Swank with it whenever he needed a quick fix. He was nothing like the whores at Gomorrah. Swank gave him something different, actually made him feel something. Maybe the change in power was something that Benny needed… It was stating to get a little boring being the one in control all the time. 

  
Forcing him to sit there in his drunken state with the taste of the ash heavy on his tongue was one of the fondest memories Swank had of Benny – and he was sure that if his boss didn’t kick his nasty smoking habit soon, he would have to remind him what his own medicine tasted like every now and then.


End file.
